A note to the anti-auto crowd

Yup. I enjoy seeing Euro trucks, but... *exploded.*

 

it will become everywhere ....most of those transmissions on your market are from here including meritor freedomline which is actually zf astronic

volvo ishift

mack m-drive

new detroit diesel 12 which is actually mercedes



here in my country automated manual transmission have its share over 95% in last 3-4 years i saw only one scania with manual , i would say that even automated manual are things from past since transmissions like VW DSG are coming soon , this would be nice evolution they can shift without power interruption, even smoother, even faster

it is already hard to find driver who want to drive manual anymore ..... know guy who has appointed test drive to job , and when he opened door and see gear knob he just close them and say to owner: "find another fool who will drive this" that was 4years ago

it is already hard to sale used truck with manual



since you have lower gross weight than we , higher hp and better roads ,you probably shift less than we do that is maybe reason why you still dont want to have auto

here you can drive for hour or more before you reach cruising speed .....when you are going on twisting mountain road with plenty of bends and sharp serpentines you will soon forget about wanting to have manual

eaton automatics are probably way behind i read all posts yesterday and today and i conclude this here no body complain about automatics

some of early ZF astronics have problems with clutch fork

 

Aww stick around , you might learn something! Lol

 

98989 I think you're right, all the complaints about the eaton auto seems to be clunky and slow gearchange as well as reliability issues and lack of control when hitching up etc, however any guy I've spoken to from the US That have driven them love the I shift, seems as though euro versions are far more advanced

 

My auto was an Eaton. Never had problem with it, until that one day it had a PM on it and hell broke loose. The PM was done at 500,000 miles, ever since that it spent every first and last Sunday in the shop having something replaced. I blame the shop in Iowa that did the PM.

 

Nothing worse than a shop that doesnt know what they are doing for sure! Are u having the same problem over and over again? If so it's def the shop! All my autos were scanias, first one I bought in 2004, usually kept them til the 1m mark, except for a speed sensor in one of them that went when almost new, that was it! no other problems.

 

No, a steel plate took that truck from and I walked on the one I was offered. But I got the titles to both from the company I leased with, traded them both in for one with a condo sleeper.

 

so lets try go back on thread

so it is not about euro but

we have more and longer experience and you guys can learn thing or two from us

era of automated transmission started here in 1983 of course it was not good but it was start....

it was scania cag( computer aided gearshifting), 8bit computer collect data about current gear, engine speed, vehicle speed, and accelerator pedal position and calculate gear and gears were shifted by pressing clutch(i think required force for clutch is 27lbs),it was electro-pneumatic gearshifting , it couldt be done better since there was no edc until 1987

it was not so popular option in trucks i saw only 2trucks with it , but many buses had it .....there was rotational switch inside with R N A M and small joystick with up and down for manual shifting

latter on 3series it had slightly changed controls

.....later in 1985 mercedes presented their EPS based on ZF gearboxes , you had joystick with +/-/ r/n and spliter on it, it was also shifted with clutch but it could not shift itself but you have to do decision which gear you want .....since 1988 it become standard equipment


zf make its own version called easyshift somewhere in end of 1989



something which could be called automated gearbox appeared in 1994/5 volvo than presented their own gearbox ( dont know name anymore) than man had eaton s.a.m.t and scania its opticruise , next year mercedes get its telligent and iveco eurotronic.....those were bad transmissions

my friend had eaton s.a.m.t on 1997 man 26403 .....owner before spend fortune repairing it .......he had also problems(with motors on gearbox) and had to convert it to manual now truck have unique transmission it is non-syncro transmission with clutch for starting , range group is shifted by "slap"( you hit gearknob left or right) and split gears are shifted with clutch total 16sppeds

he had interesting video of it starting on 10% uphill with 97000lbs and 400hp it shifts very high at 2100 but he deleted youtube chanel
........

maybe members king_q , daf paccar105, and scaniaman remember how bad was first generation of opticruise , when you slowing down for red light and put it on neutral and if you get green light before you stop it was not possible to put it in any gear even manually but you have to stop completely , also many problems with roundabouts , with intersections where it could not find propper gear always......

just remember mercedes telligent which become confused in some bends and instead to downshift it shifted up


but with every new generation autos were better and better ....i try first time automatic on man tga 18460 truck was 11/2003 i try it in 2/2007....it was winter but warm one so snow melt and mix with mud truck was empty and i did wrong things(try to start in d3), since i did not know what to do so i stuck but it was my foult not truck´s so cant blame it

i did not like how man work with clutch it was too agressive you could not start normally it was jumping also it was hard on clutch while shifting maybe reason for this was it had 586000km which is about clutch lifetime of such truck

recently my friend bougth man tga ts 18480 2003 (weight adapted for tank trailers) automatic , he haul logs, construction material,construction cranes, steel , also deliver to windfarms ....so he have some kind of challenging roads and construction sites and he did not like it but on service they update his software and over time he learn how to drive it more so he says now it is ok

 

Funny, discussion about auto or not. Could never believe that would make so big feelings. Well this only proves one thing, people are still stupid

The thing about harder to drive an auto in the winter, by my experience it's a lot easier with an auto but maybe I'm driving it on to easy roads, don't know.

Btw Scania Man: Volvo's I-shift is in fact an crashbox (no synchros what so ever) made and developed in Köping Sweden from a small group of people that thought the existing gearboxes were crap. I would say they succeeded big time.
The scania box on the other hand is just a manual with robot casing mounted on it.

Don't know about any other gearbox, yeah, tried one eaton auto. Other than it was slow as hell can't comment much.
Mounted to a valmet 611 in one of this

 

I did not know that! Everyday's a schoolday ,